4-time Hodal MLA Udai Bhan all set to contest for seat again

Tribune News Service

Palwal , August 28

The Hodal Assembly segment, a seat reserved for Scheduled Castes (SC) in Palwal district, has assumed significance as Udai Bhan, president of the Haryana Pradesh Congress Committee (HPCC), is slated to contest from here once again. He is sure to have a direct contest with the BJP.

Hodal is the only reserved segment among the nine Assembly constituencies in Palwal and Faridabad districts. “Udai Bhan, who had lost to BJP’s Jagdish Nayar in the 2019 elections by a margin of 3,387 votes, is expected to make a strong comeback in view of his elevation to the post of HPCC president and anti-incumbency prevailing in the region,” says Deep Chand, a political analyst. He adds that while this seat may see the least number of candidates, only two or three persons from the main parties have applied for the ticket.

The INLD-BSP and JJP-Azad Samaj Party alliances are set to fight elections together but the history reveals that the two main candidates had always got the majority of votes in the past three Assembly elections.

While Bhan has won the Hodal seat four times, his rival and incumbent MLA Jagdish Nayar has been elected from the constituency thrice since 1996, when he was elected for the first time.

Interestingly, Udai Bhan had fought five elections against Nayar from the seat, which was known as Hasanpur before 2,000. Nayar had lost to Bhan in the 2005 and 2014 Assembly elections. Bhan, on other hand, was elected as MLA for the first time in 1987. He had also emerged victorious in the 2000, 2005 and 2014 elections. He is considered a die-hard loyalist of two-time Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda. “Soft-spoken and mild mannered, Bhan is regarded as a mass leader,” says Karan Dalal, a former MLA from Palwal.

Nayar had changed two parties earlier while Bhan had contested the elections on the ticket of the Janata Party and the Lok Dal and also as an Independent candidate, before joining the Congress in 2004. For Bhan, being the Congress president, winning the Hodal seat has become a prestige issue, says Gaurav Tewatia, a local resident. He adds that anti-incumbency and the selection of candidates may affect the elections results in all three Assembly segments of Palwal district.

It was in Hodal that the slogan “Aya Ram-Gaya Ram” was coined in 1967 as the then local MLA had changed three parties within a day, according to a political analyst.